Between the Cherubim: The ‘Mercy Seat’ as Site of Divine Revelation in Romans 3.25

2021 ◽  
pp. 0142064X2110491
Author(s):  
Nathan Porter
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Divine Revelation

Although the long-standing debate about the meaning of hilastērion in Rom. 3.25 has led to no consensus, readings are nearly always either (1) metaphorical ( hilastērion as place of atonement/expiation) or (2) metonymic ( hilastērion as a means of atonement/expiation). However, in many Second Temple Jewish texts, the word refers to a place of divine revelation. Proposing a fresh semantic topology of usages of hilastērion, this article argues that there is no unambiguous metonymic usage of the word, and that references to atonement in Lev. 16 are secondary to the revelatory function of the ‘mercy seat’. Attending to overlooked intertextual complexities, it suggests that the hilastērion was the site where God promised to reveal the definitive interpretation of his law. The revelatory function of the hilastērion possesses prima facie plausibility as a reading of Rom. 3.21-26, which is driven by the theme of God’s self-revelation in Jesus.

Divine Revelation and the Holy Spirit

2021 ◽  
pp. 138-153
Author(s):  
William J. Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Narrow Range ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Holy Trinity ◽  
Triune God ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Representative Material

Ponder an immediate dilemma. The propositional content of divine revelation generally includes reference to the Trinity, and thus includes reference to the Holy Spirit. To be specific, the Holy Spirit is understood to be a Person in the Trinity, that Person, in contrast to the Father and the Son, who proceeds eternally from the Father. This vision of the triune God is clearly grounded in part in divine revelation. So any appeal to the activity of the Holy Spirit as critical in claims about divine revelation will already assume the existence of the Holy Spirit; hence, the whole operation is prima facie hopelessly circular. We appeal to divine revelation to underwrite claims about the existence of the Spirit as one Person in the Holy Trinity; we then appeal to the Holy Spirit to articulate and underwrite our claims about divine revelation. How can this be? After resolving this dilemma, this chapter proceeds as follows: first, it develops and deploys a schema for thinking through the relation between revelation and the action of the Holy Spirit; secondly, it suggests that representative material on the work of the Holy Spirit systematically operates on a reductionist and narrow range of issues; finally, it offers a diagnosis of what has gone wrong and makes a handful of suggestions for future research.

Russia in international capital movement: Turn of tendencies

2017 ◽  
pp. 148-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Bulatov
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Structure ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Capital Movement ◽  
International Capital ◽  
Capital Outflow ◽  
The Past ◽  
Russian Economy ◽  
National Capital ◽  
Future Situation ◽  
International Capital Movement

The paper deals with the past, current and future situation in Russian capital outflow and inflow. The specific features of the past situation (2001-2013) were as follows: big scale of Russian participation in international capital movement; turnover of national capital between Russia and offshores; stable surplus of capital outflow over inflow; inadequacy of industrial structure of capital inflow to Russian needs. The current situation is characterized by such new features as radical cut in volumes of capital outflow and inflow, some decrease in its level of offshorization. In the mid-term the probability of continuation of current trends is high. In the long-term the mode of Russian participation in international capital movement will prima facie depend on prospects of realization of systematic reforms in the Russian economy.

The Vocabulary of Revelation: Divine Intent and Self-Disclosure in the Qur'an

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-215
Author(s):  
Asma Afsaruddin
Keyword(s):  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Islamic Theology ◽  
Direct Communication ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Arabic Word ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Divine Mercy ◽  
Divine Truth

This article explores how the uniqueness of the Qur'anic revelation has been perceived by primarily Sunnī Muslim commentators through time in the context of four main analytical aspects of revelation: (i) revelation as communication between God and humans that links language to divine truth; (ii) revelation as both oral and written text that points to complementary modes of divine discourse; (iii) revelation as purposeful manifestation of divine mercy and justice; and finally (iv) the idea of revelation as beautiful and inimitable text that invites the human recipient to ponder the aesthetics of divine self-disclosure which becomes reflected in Islamic theology as the doctrine of iʿjāz al-Qurʾān. These aspects are indicated by certain key concepts and terms derived from the Qur'anic vocabulary itself and are discussed in detail in order to illuminate the nature of the Qur'anic revelation—as adumbrated within the Qur'an itself and as elaborated upon by its human exegetes. The Arabic word for the phenomenon of revelation is waḥy and is, strictly speaking, applied to the Qur'an alone. In the Qur'an, the term wahy and its derivatives frequently occur with reference to God and His communication with humankind, although exceptions exist. Tanzīl is another Qur'anic lexeme that refers uniquely to God's direct communication with humanity. In the understanding of a number of influential commentators, both these terms also imply linguistic and rhetorical excellence as a component of divine revelation recognisable in all four of the aspects identified here.

Narrative, Intertext and Allusion in the Qur'anic Presentation of Job

1999 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Johns
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Complex Network ◽  
Key Words And Phrases ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Job (Ayyūb) is a byword for patience in the Islamic tradition, notwithstanding only six Qur'anic verses are devoted to him, four in Ṣād (vv.41-4), and two in al-Anbiyā' (vv.83-4), and he is mentioned on only two other occasions, in al-Ancām (v.84) and al-Nisā' (v.163). In relation to the space devoted to him, he could be accounted a ‘lesser’ prophet, nevertheless his significance in the Qur'an is unambiguous. The impact he makes is achieved in a number of ways. One is through the elaborate intertext transmitted from the Companions and Followers, and recorded in the exegetic tradition. Another is the way in which his role and charisma are highlighted by the prophets in whose company he is presented, and the shifting emphases of each of the sūras in which he appears. Yet another is the wider context created by these sūras in which key words and phrases actualize a complex network of echoes and resonances that elicit internal and transsūra associations focusing attention on him from various perspectives. The effectiveness of this presentation of him derives from the linguistic genius of the Qur'an which by this means triggers a vivid encounter with aspects of the rhythm of divine revelation no less direct than that of visual iconography in the Western Tradition.

What's Divine about Divine Law?

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Western Idea ◽  
Jewish Writers ◽  
Divine Law

In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. This book untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition—Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis—struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy. This book shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. The book describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. It shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. The book then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West. This book sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.

Dyadic Obligations over Complex Actions as Deontic Constraints in the Situation Calculus

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Claßen ◽  
James Delgrande
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Deontic Logic ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Situation Calculus ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Planning Techniques ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Reasoning About Action ◽  
The Given

With the advent of artificial agents in everyday life, it is important that these agents are guided by social norms and moral guidelines. Notions of obligation, permission, and the like have traditionally been studied in the field of Deontic Logic, where deontic assertions generally refer to what an agent should or should not do; that is they refer to actions. In Artificial Intelligence, the Situation Calculus is (arguably) the best known and most studied formalism for reasoning about action and change. In this paper, we integrate these two areas by incorporating deontic notions into Situation Calculus theories. We do this by considering deontic assertions as constraints, expressed as a set of conditionals, which apply to complex actions expressed as GOLOG programs. These constraints induce a ranking of "ideality" over possible future situations. This ranking in turn is used to guide an agent in its planning deliberation, towards a course of action that adheres best to the deontic constraints. We present a formalization that includes a wide class of (dyadic) deontic assertions, lets us distinguish prima facie from all-things-considered obligations, and particularly addresses contrary-to-duty scenarios. We furthermore present results on compiling the deontic constraints directly into the Situation Calculus action theory, so as to obtain an agent that respects the given norms, but works solely based on the standard reasoning and planning techniques.

The Economics of wages and wages policy in the depression and recovery period: distinctive elements in the New Zealand debate, 1931- 1936

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Endres
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Real Wage ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
Recovery Period ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Currency Devaluation ◽  
Money Wage ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Compulsory Arbitration ◽  
Wage Cuts

This article discusses distinctive features of the New Zealand debate on the economics of wages and wages policy from 1931 up to the restoration of compulsory arbitration in 1936. Local economic orthodoxy proffered advice which, consistent with Keynes (1936), turned on the need for a general real wage reduction effected mostly through currency devaluation, rather than through further money wage cuts. Dissenters were critical of currency devaluation; they stressed excessively generous unemployment relief, real wage 'overhang' and structural real wage distorttons. Tentative estimates of both aggregate real product wage and labour productivity changes demonstrate, prima facie, that at least one strand in the dissenting argument was defensible.

The Emergence of Rabbinic Culture from the Perspective of Qumran

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-274
Author(s):  
Vered Noam
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Set Up

The rabbinic halakhic system, with its many facets and the literary works that comprise it, reflects a new Jewish culture, almost completely distinct in its halakhic content and scope from the biblical and postbiblical culture that preceded it. By examining Jewish legislation in the area of corpse impurity as a test case, the article studies the implications of Qumranic halakhah, as a way-station between the Bible and the Mishnah, for understanding how Tannaitic halakhah developed. The impression obtained from the material reviewed in the article is that the direction of the “Tannaitic revolution” was charted, its methods set up, and its principles established, at a surprisingly early stage, before the destruction of the Second Temple, and thus at the same time that the Qumran literature was created.

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